After reading the Library of America's volume of novels by David Goodis, David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s (Library of America) , I needed to know more of this author. Goodis (917 -- 1967) is best-known for his novel "Down There", also available from the LOA, which became the basis of the Francois Truffaut movie, "Shoot the Piano Player." Goodis worked in Hollywood for several years before returning to his Philadelphia home in 1950. In Philadelphia, Goodis wrote many pulp, noir novels published in inexpensive paperback editions and seemingly destined for oblivion.

Written in 1954, "The Blonde on the Street Corner" is among the Goodis novels not included in the LOA volume. The book is set in the rowhouses and streets of Philadelphia in the midst of the Depression in a cold 1936 December. The novel is distinctively noir in tone, but crime plays no part in it.

Most of this novel offers a portrayal of four unemployed young men in their early 30's and their families. The men, Ralph, Ken, Dippy, and George, hang around together on a streetcorner in front of a candy store and in each others' homes. Goodis individualizes each character, as Ken is a failed would-be songwriter, Dippy a part-time laborer who calls women at random from the phone book in search of dates, and George, a failed baseball player in the lowest level of the minor leagues and on the sandlot. Ralph Creel, 30, the primary character of the book has the heart of a romantic. Unemployed and unwilling even to look for work, Ralph describes himself as "hoping for a cleaner better life." Ralph lives with his family, including his working class father and his wife and two younger sisters.

The four young men loaf on street corners, bum cigarettes,chew on nuts, try to meet women, and occasionally work. Goodis portrays something of the family lives of each of his characters in addition to Ralph. Dippy lives with his mother, his brother, a lawyer, and his brother's wife Leonore in a house full of quarelling. In the thin plot line of the book, Leonore eyes Ralph on a streetcorner winter night and determines to seduce him. Ralph has another potential romantic interest in a young woman,Edna Daly, recently arrived in Philadelphia as her family searches for work.

Goodis' writing in the novel changes with his scenes and characters. When the book describes Ralph's inner life, his dreams and his fears, the writing takes on a stream of conscious, surrealistic and extensively descriptive quality. Ralph spends a good deal of time alone, away from his companions and his family, on the streets and walking restlessly around a small city lake. When the characters talk or interact with each other, the sentences are short and clipped.

In one scene, the four men on the streetcorner have a discussion late one night about going to downtown Philadelphia on Market Street to look for work. They talk about the many people on the busy street and speculate on their motives for going downtown. One of the characters says:

"All right, so maybe a lot of them were there for the same reason. Or they were going into stores to buy things. Do you think people are crazy" Do you think they come in town, from all parts of the city, just to walk up and down Market Street?"

And one of the friends responds:

"I think a lot of those people come in town and walk up and down because they're lonesome."

"The Blonde on the Street Corner" is a deeply pessimistic novel about people in large cities without prospects leading desperately lonely lives. The book offers a failed, gritty romantic vision. As do the Goodis novels included in the Library of America volumes, this book transcends the pulp format in which it was written and published.

Robin Friedman